Dafatone:For the love of, uh, god, can we stop calling the Higgs Boson a "god particle"?

Wtf does that even mean?

From teh Wiki:

Higgs is an atheist, and is displeased that the Higgs particle is nicknamed the "God particle",[29] as he believes the term "might offend people who are religious".[30] Usually this nickname for the Higgs boson is attributed to Leon Lederman, the author of the book The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?, but the name is the result of the insistence of Lederman's publisher: Lederman had originally intended to refer to it as the "goddamn particle".

Just give it to Higgs. He is the one who had the original thought that said 'there should actually be a particle'. If you include anyone else then you get into sticky territory. It has always been the case that on experimental proof the originator of the concept gets the prize (which is why so many people have missed out because they died before experimental proof occurred)

Whoa, look out there. That guy is some kind of super-genius. We know, because he told us all just yesterday about how extremely awesome and smart he is. I was so impressed that I went to look at his website, but it doesn't seem to exist. It's probably only accessible to elite awesome geniuses.

Just give it to that guy. Because he'll probably tie you up and leave you half-buried in the woods if you don't.

I loved the placement of that photo in TFA: "Here's a list of all the contenders we've scribbled down on our gin-soaked napkin. Now here's a photo of someone who isn't any of those guys. He's chief of security or something. Now where were we?"

Mr_Fabulous:Give it to the guys at Fermilab who did all the real legwork for years and years, before those CERN farks stepped in and took all the credit.

I guess we could biatch and moan about the ancient Greeks getting no credit, even though they first thought up atoms. You're being silly. And this isn't an issue anyone here has any reason to be concerned about at all.

Dafatone:For the love of, uh, god, can we stop calling the Higgs Boson a "god particle"?

Wtf does that even mean?

Physicist Leon Lederman wrote a book about 20th Century particle physics research. He was calling the Higgs boson "the goddamn(ed) particle," because the search for it had been so long and frustrating, and so much was riding on it. His publisher came up with 'the God particle,' apparently. Most physicists hate the term; Lederman laughs it off, but he does most things. Rather coincidentally, the particle is key to a lot of the Standard Model, and that seems to be what's carried the term forward to this point. But it's just silly, and everyone should ignore it. The press can't, because they just can't resist what they think are sexy-sounding expressions, but we can try to ignore them -- ideally by not calling attention to it or reacting to them.

If you mean pride by journalists, then yes. There's no reason to believe that the world of physics is all a dither over this. It appears to be a manufactured controversy to sell media. It might become a dustup down the road, but if it does, it'll be over why the Nobel Committee is still applying 20th Century methods to 21st Century subjects.

Jesus McSordid:To be fair, the Peace Prize has been farked up for decades. Henery Kissinger, anyone?

I've started to consider that the modern Peace Prize is now handed out to whomever had the power to kill lots of people, but the restraint not to, and more importantly the resolve to try very hard not to kill as many people as they could. Kissinger is an odious being, but he worked hard to keep mid-Century proxy wars to reasonable size. In that sense, his methods, evil as they were, probably saved millions. Obama inherited two wars he would probably have avoided if it was his call, and getting out of something like that isn't as simple as lot of people seem to think it is. He was probably honoured for the same: trying hard to limit the damage, especially in the future, when he had the power to do exactly the opposite, as his predecessor did. And yeah, I do think it was also intended as a giant Fark You to the Bushies, as answer for their globe-stomping. You can make of it what you will, but they've still got a Peace Prize to give out every year, and both Gandhi and Mother Theresa are dead.